


Better than a thousand words

by Grumpy_Grizzly



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:36:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grumpy_Grizzly/pseuds/Grumpy_Grizzly
Summary: After a night out, Lena has to go back to work the next morning, and with a headache.





	Better than a thousand words

**Author's Note:**

> This has taken way longer to finish than I thought it would. I would like to thank Ambrose a lot for all the reading and commenting and correcting silly mistakes, and for the title improvement !  
> Enjoy the reading!

Urrrgh… What was that nasty feeling in her head? Why did she feel so much like someone was playing drums right by her ears? Lena opened her eyes and tried to stand up but she was immediately stopped by a terrible dizziness. The upsetting feeling in her stomach did not help at all.

She closed her eyes again, wishing against all odds it would go away instantly.

“Hrrmpf. Stupid headache.” Mumbling to herself, she looked briefly at the clock beside her bed. Had it not shown her how late she was for work, she might have noticed that it was neither her clock nor her bed that she had just woken up in. But the urgency of being on time for her meetings of the morning and the hefty paperwork to go through to decide which projects were going to bedetails meaningless.

She sat up slowly on the side of the bed, trying to keep from upsetting her stomach more. The blanket fell down from her shoulders, making her cold from the air on her bare skin. Lena shivered, looking around for her clothes. She had to find them fast, and get up and get to the LCorp Building as soon as possible. She could not be late for these meetings, that would simply not do.

Just as her brain was registering that someone had just moved behind her, she felt a strong and warm embrace coming from behind her as Kara hugged her and whispered softly in her ear to just call in sick, stay there, and enjoy the morning. She felt herself relax in her girlfriend’s arms and almost gave in to the very tempting idea before her slightly hungover brain reminded her once more of her responsibilities.

As she half-heartedly freed herself from Kara’s embrace, she spotted her clothes in a neatly organised pile. She was astonished that she had the presence of mind to do that even though she had had quite a lot of drinks last night. At least these clothes would do until she reached her office where she always kept spare ones. She dressed herself as quickly as she could without upsetting her stomach again.

“So you really can’t call in sick?” Kara’s puppy look made Lena feel guilty about going to work, but she had a company to run, and a hangover was not a good enough reason to call in sick. “Sadly, no, sweetie. As much as I’d love to, I won’t.” She looked around, all dressed up. “Would you by any chance have any painkiller?”

Kara looked puzzled at her. “What for?”

“I have a killer hangover, from last night.” She remembered dancing and drinking, and she was pretty sure that Kara had drunk at least as much as her, if not more. She shot her a surprised look. “Don’t you have one too from all the drinks you had?” Kara looked sheepishly back. “No, I feel fine. And I don’t think I have any painkillers around here, sorry.”

“Why must life be so unfair.” Lena added a fake dramatic sigh, and turned around to pick her bag. “Don’t you have work today too ?”

“No, I took the day off to help Alex prepare for Thanksgiving’s dinner, she’s extra stressed this year with Maggie being invited too. Are you sure you can’t stay?”

Lena’s phone buzzed with her driver notifying her that he would be in front of the building in two minutes. She remembered driving back to Kara’s place in her limousine, which explained how Michael had gotten there so fast. She turned back to leave a soft goodbye kiss on Kara’s pouty lips. It took all her willpower not to give in to her girlfriend’s request. “I don’t want to be around your sister when she’s stressed, Kara, I’m pretty sure that’d be life threatening. I’ll see you soon!”

Lena put her sunglasses on as she left Kara’s building. Her limousine was right there and Lena jumped in swiftly, pleased to not have to wait on the sidewalk.

“To the LCorp building, Michael.”

“There is some traffic but it shouldn’t be too long, miss Luthor.”

Lena nodded at the rear mirror, before dozing off to the soft sounds of the car engine.

“We’ve reached the parking, miss Luthor.” Michael’s voice woke Lena again, her headache still beating on her temples, thankfully weaker than before.

“Thank you, Michael.”

Lena stood out of the car, slowly steeling herself to face the day coming ahead. Taking the elevator, she reached the executive floor and was greeted by her assistant Jess who took one look at her and silently gave her a glass of water and an aspirin. Lena didn’t question this or even take offense, being immensely grateful to have Jess as her assistant.

“Thank you, Jess.” She swallowed the aspirin and the water immediately after.

“Your 10 o’clock called to cancel the meeting. They had to attend an urgent internal matter and said they would be planning for another meeting later when that has been sorted out.”

Lena was partially relieved not to have to discuss buyout prices for the tech her R&D team had made a request for, because she felt like she was not at her best for that. And it also meant she would be able to take a nap in her office without being disturbed for a while, before spending the afternoon working on the projects’ funding.

She sat down on her couch and fell asleep rather quickly, still exhausted.

Lena woke up as her assistant knocked on her door. She sat straight on the couch before calling her in.

“I just wanted to remind you that you have a meeting in half an hour, miss Luthor.”

“Right, thank you for the reminder.”

Lena stood up and as Jess exited the room, she went to her spare clothes closet and changed into a clean outfit. Her head felt a lot better, and she used the rest of her time before the meeting to catch up on work details.

The rest of the morning went smoothly and around 1pm she was already going over the various project papers, considering which would most benefit the company and the people of National City. Most of the projects were ambitious, and Lena was so absorbed in the papers that she didn’t hear Jess knock nor enter her office.

“Miss Luthor?”

Lena almost jumped from her seat when she heard Jess.

“Sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Jess looked concerned.

“What is it, Jess? Is something wrong?”

Jess took a deep breath, fiddling with her hands.

“There is some kind of PR issue, I just had LCorp’s social media manager on the phone and he asked for an emergency meeting with you.”

“What about? Did he not mention the details of the issue? Get him to my office as soon as possible, project funding can wait a little longer.”

“He said he did not want to talk about it over the phone, he just mentioned some image problem. I’ll call him back right away.”

As she waited for her media manager to come, Lena made herself some coffee. It was shortly after she was holding her warm mug that Mark entered her office after a quick knock, looking somewhat stressed out. Lena saw her phone light up at the same time with a call, but decided it could wait, especially considering the caller ID was Lilian Luthor.

“Hello, Mark. What is this PR problem that cannot be discussed over the phone?”

He looked at her with some surprise.

“So you haven’t seen the news yet? Nobody called either?”

Lena shook her head, bewildered.

“Some hacker pretends to have hacked into several high-ranking corporate people’s phones and has leaked some of the data that was stolen. Several private images have been leaked this way.”

“I’m guessing LCorp is among the companies that have been targeted if you’re being so worried. Whose phones have been hacked?”

Mark took a deep breath.

“Your own, miss Luthor.” Lena felt betrayed. “The hacker used a security breach in the phone’s operating system. They shared out pictures from the phones they hacked, and as far as this breach is concerned, the internet is mostly going wild on one of your pictures and a few of Cat Grant’s own sulfurous ones. And while they also shared other data, nothing is fascinating the internet more than those pictures.”

Lena was furious at having her privacy invaded, but could not really see what kind of pictures could be more newsworthy than Cat Grant’s.

“What about these pictures, Mark?”

She took her phone and dismissed her mother’s call before browsing her picture gallery and going through the few pictures she had. She did not use her phone camera very often, and it was mostly to take landscapes pictures.

“Are you sure this is not some mistake? I don’t think I have any compromising pictures on my phone.”

Just as she said that, she scrolled to a picture that was dated from the day before. She had obviously taken it while dancing with Kara, as the blonde woman was in the middle of the slightly blurry picture. She remembered the moment that had led to her taking the picture, because she had almost fallen down right before (probably because of the alcohol, but she would not admit that) and as Kara caught her effortlessly, the clumsy CEO ended up pushing Kara’s glasses down to the floor. She had been calling Kara her ‘knight in armour’ with humour after that, and she had taken the picture right then.

“Well, there’s this picture that seems to be of Supergirl right in the middle of a dance club of National City. People on the internet are kind of going wild on assumptions there.”

Lena almost choked on the sip of coffee she had just taken. At least she didn’t spill any on the floor. She looked back at the picture, then showed it to Mark.

“This picture?”

Mark nodded. “It looks like it. The lighting is dark and the picture is quite blurry, but many people are seeing this as Supergirl and rumours are going wild about you and her somehow.”

Lena stared at the picture. Even though it was blurry, Kara looked amazing, as she always did, and for once, her beautiful blue eyes were not hidden by her glasses. Her hair had been slightly ‘wilder’ than usual, especially after all the dancing and laughing that evening. Lena could suddenly see how people who did not know Kara might have thought this could be Supergirl. Both her and Kara did share a similar build, height and hair colour… A thought crossed her mind…

“So, miss Luthor? How do you want us to deal with that?” She noted that Mark had not asked anything about whether there was any truth in the rumours. Respect of privacy was very important to her.

“What is your analysis? Would it be damaging to LCorp and if so, how? Because if I know anything about rumours, it’s that you can’t fight them easily and the more you fight against them, the more they grow.”

Thinking back on her idea before Mark’s question, she searched for some information on the internet. Her attention was drawn to her phone lighting up again to notify her of several messages, but she chose to ignore them for now.

“Well, I share your point of view on rumours. Also, I don’t really see you going to the same dance club as Supergirl as having any sort of influence on LCorp’s image, we can’t go much lower than where your brother’s actions have sent us.” He had the decency to sort of wince as he was saying that, but Lena would never blame anyone saying her brother had screwed up.

Lena was looking at the picture again and considering what her next actions should be. If people thought she knew Supergirl, she might become a target for many dangerous people, and while that was something she was almost used to with her family, she did not want to endanger her few friends, especially not Kara, or her employees. But just coming around and saying this was not Supergirl would not be good enough, especially considering the Internet rumour mill was a powerful crushing mecanism. She did not plan on having the Streisand effect renamed into the Luthor effect.

“But people are bound to wonder whether this was Supergirl or not, miss Luthor.”

What she was adamant about though was to keep Kara Danvers from being hit by some media storm. If she acted about the rumour it would only be to make sure that Kara Danvers was kept safe from the mess.

“The thing is, I have met Supergirl several times, Mark, because I was lucky enough to have her save my life a few times. I would know if I had been dancing around with her, I think.” She liked to consider the alien superhero a friend, and remembered that Kara had mentioned Supergirl believed in her once. At that memory, something clicked in her mind and she felt like she had been totally blind before. Had she been alone in the office, she’d have hit her forehead.

“I have no doubt that you would indeed, miss Luthor. But people on the internet are going wild with theories that are all over the place. So far, my team thinks there will be little to no consequences to the company if we just let it go and ignore the issue.” Mark took a deep breath. “But we thought it better to discuss with you because there will most likely be journalists calling to rattle your chains and ask for comments and interviews and we’d rather have a consistent storyline to share with the media.”

“That is a very good idea, and I have to say I’m thankful because without your warning I might have looked like a fool in front of journalists. I don’t really know what we should be saying if prompted for answers though.”

“I was thinking about getting all the staff and PR team to just go with a simple “Miss Luthor’s privacy has been breached and we are currently looking to find out the hackers and sue them. Any discussions regarding miss Luthor’s private life is nobody’s business except miss Luthor’s.” I would also suggest that you get in touch with the National City Police Department to try and press charges against the hacker.”

“Yes, I will get the legal department to deal with this. And I will also ask the IT staff to start making a full security checkup on the whole company and advise for safer phones and computers to be used around here. I’d rather not have to face something like that again.” Lena paused to take a sip of coffee. “I think that for now simply deflecting questions will probably do. We’ll see how it evolves. I am sure that there’ll soon be something bigger on the news. Thank you for the report and keep monitoring the situation, Mark.”

“Yes, miss Luthor. I’ll call in case there is anything new.”

“Good, Mark. Have a good day.”

After he had left her office, Lena took her phone, dismissing the five missed calls from her mother and the twelve texts asking her to call and explain that picture. She sighed then pondered on how to talk to her “mother”.

She knew that Lilian Luthor hated Supergirl, if only because she was related to Superman and in the eyes of Lilian Luthor, anything related to the man of steel was to be eliminated swiftly. Lena had to make sure that if Lilian heard anything about this, she would not believe this was Supergirl. She didn’t think her “mother” would hold any stock to rumours on the internet, but she did not want to take any chances about that. Who knew what she would do to harm the alien if she had a chance… There was no way Lena would let any harm come to Kara from her mother. She made a mental note to make sure to check that there was no more of her mother or her brother’s bad influence on the company. This had already been a plan of hers but she decided to make it even more of a priority.

Lena thought about talking to Kara about it, but she realised that she could just not come up to her girlfriend with a “By the way, the internet thinks you’re Supergirl, and I think they’re right, aren’t they?”, that would be a bit weird.

Her phone lit up again with a phonecall from Lilian Luthor. After a heavy sigh, Lena picked the phone up.

“Hello, Lilian.”

“Is the rumour true, Lena?”

Lena pondered playing the fool for a while but decided against it. Giving her mother more reasons to consider her foolish would be suicidal.

“It’s just the Internet blurting out crazy stuff because there’s nothing happening in National City right now. Do you seriously think Supergirl would just go to a dance club like that, or that I wouldn’t be able to recognise her? I’ve met her a few times, I think I would know.”

There was a small pause during which Lena held her breath. Lilian Luthor did not seem to have considered that possibility at all. Lena was suddenly grateful that she did not look drunk at all in the picture, considering her state of inebriety, because that would have given Lilian more ammo.

“That is right. It is a shame though, imagine what we could do if we could get close to that alien.”

Lena did not like her mother’s tone at all. It sounded too much like a calculating psychopath or a mad woman, and Lena couldn’t decide which sounded worse. She decided that it did not matter much but that it was probably a good thing that she never introduced Kara to her mother because she did not want Lilian to ever guess who Supergirl was. Plus she would probably be excessively annoying to anyone dating her.

“I am sure that you would have plenty of ideas, mother. But it is just wishful thinking at this point since that is not Supergirl. The social media staff advised me to let it blow over, sue the hacker and change phones, which is exactly what I am going to do, with a complete security check-up.”

“I guess this is a way to deal with this mess… This better not lower LCorp’s business or I’ll hold you responsible, my dear daughter.”

Everything always sounded like a threat coming from Lilian, but Lena had gotten used to that a long time ago, and it no longer had any hold on her.

She just hoped this whole mess would blow over fast enough so that Lilian would let it go and hopefully forget everything about it. After Lex’ violent actions, Lilian had somehow managed to turn it into blaming the Man of Steel for all the problems they had faced, ignoring the whole “Lex is a psychopath” detail.

“Well, if that’s all right with you, I have a meeting in ten minutes, so I will go back to my CEO duties. Goodbye, mother.”

Lilian did not even answer, she just hung up. Lena was just glad the phone call was over and that she had not asked for details about the meeting excuse she came up with to hang up.

Lena took a deep long breath, trying to relax. Phone calls with her mother always made her very tense. She finished her coffee even though it was cold, still wrapping her mind around the fact that Kara was Supergirl. What baffled her most was how it had taken her so long to realize it, let alone suspect it. Thinking back on every interaction she had had with Supergirl, she felt like she had been blind somehow. It also explained a lot in terms of how Supergirl always seemed to know a lot about her.

Lena suddenly understood why Kara’s sister (was she an alien too?) had not been very friendly the first few times they had met, given her last name and her family’s reputation. She was still very thankful that Alex had saved her life at the press conference. She wondered how Kara would react (or had reacted) to that picture of them at the dance club. Since she was not working at Catco today, maybe she was not even aware of the picture and the rumours around it.

Should she pretend she did not know? After all, when she thought about it, Kara seemed to try having a ‘normal’ life, though in Lena’s opinion, normal was extremely overrated and human was not really good either, considering how her mother was ‘human’ and ‘normal’. She also had no idea how she could bring that up, because saying out of the blue “So, you’re Supergirl, right?” was really a bad plan and would be weird.

She felt trapped by her name again, because she was convinced that if she told Kara she knew, it might somehow be misinterpreted because she was a Luthor. She cared a lot about the woman, she felt like a ray of sunshine (or like the entire sun given Lena’s attachment to her) in her otherwise grey life.

She went through the first half of the afternoon in a weird mood, half-expecting a storm coming because of the rumours, and still in an intense inner debate about whether to talk to Kara about it or not. Every phone ring sounded like the end of the world until Lena eventually disconnected the office phone, knowing that she could rely on Jess for the day. Going through the paperwork uninterrupted gave her some peace of mind again, and while she had certainly not forgotten anything about the day, she felt a lot less stressed out by everything, and by the end of the afternoon her headache was almost entirely gone.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Yes, come in, please.”

Jess came in her office with a questioning look.

“I have miss Danvers on the phone who says you weren’t answering and she wanted to check in on you, should I transfer the call to your office or tell her to call you back later?”

Lena gasped and picked her cellphone, seeing the many (if not hundreds) notifications. Kara had sent her a lot of messages through the afternoon, and given the number she might have gotten worried from the absence of answers. She plugged her office phone back in, earning a questioning look from Jess.

“Yes, please, do transfer the call to my office phone. I unplugged it to work in peace and forgot to check my own cellphone. Thank you, Jess.”

“I’ll do it right away.”

Jess went back to her desk. A few moments later, Lena’s phone rang and she picked it up immediately.

“Lena, finally! I was starting to wonder if you had been killed by paperwork. I sent you like a thousand messages.”

Lena chuckled.

“I wouldn’t have lasted that long as a CEO if some paperwork could just kill me like that.” She went through the notifications on her cellphone, they were almost all either messages or calls from Kara.

“I’m really sorry, Kara, the morning was a bit hectic in terms of phone calls and I just plugged it out to be able to work quietly. I didn’t check my phone until now.” She grinned. “I don’t know where you learned to count, but I see 258 notifications, that hardly makes a thousand messages.”

“I’ll have you know I am very good at maths, Lena.” Kara’s voice was cheerful but Lena could hear a hint of worry behind it. “I was slightly worried though, given that you have been attacked several times already.” Lena felt terrible for worrying Kara.

“Nobody’s attacked me, Kara, I'm fine."

"Is your headache gone?"

“Yes, I’m all better now, I had a nap between meetings this morning”

"You mean the workaholic in you slept at the office ? I can't believe it!"

Lena sighed but was interrupted before she could answer.

"I told you to call in sick today, see, I was right, you needed more rest."

"LCorp does not run itself, you know." She thought about the picture and the rumours again, unsure how to breach the subject. "Plus there was a security breach I had to deal with."

"I thought you hadn't been attacked, Lena!" Kara's voice sounded worried again.

"No.. no, that is not what I meant. Some company phones were hacked, nobody got hurt, Kara."

"Oh." Lena could hear Kara breathing out in relief.

"It's mostly PR stuff, I am surprised that as a journalist you have not heard of it, it has been all over the news today, which is why I unplugged my phone."

"Well, it's my day off! I did not want to spend it checking the news." Kara chuckled. "I know it's a foreign idea for you, but I have a life outside work." Lena grumbled at that. "You know it's nice to unplug sometimes."

Lena realised she had to bring the picture up at some point. She toyed with the idea of not saying anything for a while longer but it would not do any good to anyone.

"Well, it is good for me that my PR department did not unplug because my phone was among those hacked and some of the crazy people of the internet started rumours from a picture I took yesterday evening."

The other side of the conversation went very silent for a while.

"What kind of rumours? Are .." There was a ring at Kara's place. "Wait, I'll get the door." Lena heard the phone clink as it was set on a table or something. “Hey! Alex, …”

It quickly became harder for Lena to understand what was being said, but she heard a very long and very nervous talk from Alex, where she only caught a few words among which ‘Supergirl’ and ‘secret’ allowed her to easily guess what the topic of Alex’ intervention was. Lena was picturing Alex saying she was somehow either responsible, planning to use that photo leak for nefarious goals or even that she was trying to disclose Supergirl’s secret identity.

The idea of being responsible for anything harming Kara was sickening, and she hated nothing more than being accused wrongly. She was feeling the beginning of a panic attack building up in her chest. She breathed deeply, pushing the negative thoughts away for an instant. She did not want to break down on the phone, and she tried to convince herself that she was overreacting.

After a long moment that felt both too long and ending too quickly because Lena's breath was still irregular, Kara picked up her phone again.

"Lena? Are you still there?"

Lena did not know how to transition to 'I guess your sister told you everybody believes a picture of you in my phone is Supergirl'. She took a deep breath before answering. "Yes."

“Would you like to have dinner at my place tonight?" Lena was under the impression that there was a sliver of doubt in Kara's voice, like she was questioning her own actions. It made her hesitate just for a second before answering "Yes! I'd love that, but please be careful in the kitchen"

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. So, when do you think you'll be there?"

"I think I can get out of here around 5. Besides I'm the CEO, what's the point if I can't leave whenever?"

"See you at 6?"

"Yes. Do you need me to bring anything?"

"Just you will be more than enough."

Lena was both convinced she needed to bring up the picture and rumours tonight, and worried that maybe Kara might consider it safer for her secret identity to end things there with her. She shook her head, trying to shake away the dark thoughts. It was time to leave the office anyway, if she wanted to have some time to change at her place.

“I am leaving the office for tonight, Jess, have a good evening.”

“Thank you, miss Luthor. Have a good evening too.”

She arranged for Michael to wait for her inside the company’s underground parking with one of the other company cars, hoping journalists would be waiting for her usual black limo to come out and not notice other vehicles. Her hopes were not deceived and she reached her apartment without any sort of trouble.

After taking forever to decide what she was going to wear, Lena ended up almost running to avoid being late. She had bought a nice little plant at a florist to bring to Kara, and she was trying not to anticipate anything that might be said during this evening, while Michael was driving her to Kara's building.

"Thank you, Michael. You can take your evening, I shouldn't need you to drive me home tonight."

"Yes, Miss. Have a nice evening."

Lena took a deep breath before going in the building. Just as she was about to knock on the door, she hesitated, suddenly overcome with worry. She feared losing Kara so much, the idea of being rejected had crept surreptitiously in her mind and was now threatening to take over. She tried to focus on her breathing as she did whenever panic crept on her, and after a moment or two, she was feeling better.

She glanced at her watch, realising now she was really late, and knocked at the door.

"Hey sweetie. Sorry I am a bit late, and I have no good excuse for it, but I do have a plant to decorate your apartment."

Kara took the plan, deposited it on the counter where Lena had put her handbag and kissed her girlfriend.

"Don't worry, I was a bit late myself."

"How did the Thanksgiving preparations go?"

Kara hesitated.

"We didn't get much of anything done. Mostly because Alex kept worrying about every single detail although I kept telling her that Eliza would find it great however the food was. And the turkey has been left in my charge, it's in the fridge and I will just need to cook it tomorrow at Alex’s."

Lena wondered if she should mention the picture and its media coverage but she did not know how to start that conversation, and she was entirely too focused on Kara’s talking.

“Okay, that sounds like a solid plan, but what have you planned for tonight? Because you do know that potstickers are not a complete dinner, right?”

Kara pouted for a second.

“I’m pretty sure it counts as a complete dinner. I know I could feed myself only on these.”

“And you would end up with a lot of deficiencies, please promise me you don’t eat only potstickers.”

Kara held her hands in the air. “Don’t worry, I eat other things too, I swear. Plus tonight’s plan is pizza, which has been ruled a vegetable by the Congress if I’m not mistaken, so all good.” She took a deep breath, and led Lena to the couch to sit down. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Those were the worst eight words Lena had heard in a long time.

“It’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time.” Kara paused briefly. “But every time there was a reason not to do so, and that means I had to lie to you.” Lena’s breath hitched. “And that is something I have been struggling with from the beginning, because you have been a real light in my life, Lena.” Kara took Lena’s hand and squeezed it gently. She was not looking directly at Lena. “I hope you can forgive me for lying to you for so long.”

Kara’s phone started ringing and Lena saw it was Alex but Kara just rejected the phone call and put her phone on silent.

“Wasn’t that your sister? It could be important..”

“No, she’s just annoying right now.” Kara took a deep breath. “What I was trying to say is that my real name is not Kara Danvers, it’s Kara Zor-El. I am Supergirl.”

“I know, Kara.”

Kara gasped. “How? When?”

“Well, I’d love to pretend I was so smart I guessed it a long time ago.” Lena chuckled. “But I only put the pieces together today with the picture leak and the internet rumours.”

Kara nodded. “So the PR problem you talked about on the phone before Alex came in was about me? Alex interrupted the phone call and after she showed me the picture, we argued quite a long time because I said I would tell you the truth. She said it was dangerous and that we should limit people who know my secret identity to a minimum.”

“She has a point, the more people who know, the more at risk you are of having your identity discovered.”

Kara shook her head.

“Yes, but no. It’s not just that, she does not trust you, and I told her off just before you came here. ”

Lena sighed. “I don’t blame her, given my name.”

“Come on, Lena, just because your mother and brother are bad people does not mean you are. And I know you, Lena, you’re a good person. Your actions define you, not your name." Kara hugged Lena, which made her feel better.

Lena loved Kara's usual hair scent, it made her feel safe, but today it smelled different. She gasped when she realised the smell did not come from Kara's hair.

"Something's burning!"

"Oh no! The pizza !" Kara stood up incredibly fast and opened the oven, taking the pizza out of it with her bare hands.

"Kara! You're supposed to use oven gloves!"

Kara smiled sheepishly at her. "I was trying to save the pizza!"

Lena looked at the charred piece, then back at Kara.

"I'm sorry but I can't lie to you, sweetie. I believe you did not save that pizza."

Kara stared sadly at the burnt pizza. "No, the amazing dinner that I had totally made myself and not bought from a store is ruined!" She said in an exaggeratedly dramatic voice.

"We can always order something." Lena saw Kara’s hopeful look and sighed. “Yes, we can order potstickers, but you better leave me some!”


End file.
